Orpheus' Lyre Plays On
by screaming-poetically
Summary: After the War, Hermione comes on a mission to the dragon reserve, and she grows close with Charlie. CWHG.


**Title:** Orpheus' Lyre Plays On  
**Pairing: **Charlie/Hermione.  
**Rating: **FRT.  
**Word count:** 1, 935.  
**Warnings:** Minor spoilers for DH.  
**Prompt:** Put your iTunes on shuffle, and write a drabble based on each of the first ten songs that play.  
**Summary:** After the War, Hermione comes on a mission to the dragon reserve, and she grows close with Charlie. CWHG.  
**Disclaimer:** The names of all characters contained herein are the property of JK Rowling. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.

Orpheus' Lyre Plays On

**Wilco – Side With the Seeds**

Charlie is standing, one foot on a low rung and his hands clasped in front of him, at the fence surrounding the habitat of a Norwegian Ridgeback when Hermione arrives. He has been expecting her for quite some time; the Ministry, under the administration of puppets and Death Eaters, had taken and destroyed the wands of many Muggle-born witches and wizards. It was Hermione's task, after the war, to help find a solution to the wand problem. There had been thefts, muggings – the wizarding world would very soon descend into chaos, if a solution wasn't found.

Just Hermione's luck then, that this very dragon Charlie was now observing, was about to die. It had a rot in its bones, one that could not be healed by magic or medicine.

Hermione joined Charlie at the fence. He grinned lazily at her, and then looked back to the dragon.

"How does it feel," he said, "to be the Ministry's vulture?"

He knows it is rude, but it's not his fault he's always been more interested in dragons than in women. She touches his shoulder once, caressing faintly, and he hears her whisper "I'm sorry" before she walks away.

Charlie runs a hand through his hair and swears at himself.

**Whiskeytown – Sit & Listen to the Rain**

He makes up his cross words to Hermione when a Hungarian Horntail charges at her one day while she's filling a bucket with water from the well near its habitat, and Charlie pushes her out of the way, getting a nasty cut across his side in the process. She takes care of his wound, chastising him softly, and pressing a kiss to his forehead after. They become fast friends.

He invites Hermione to come live in his cabin; the tented barracks, he says, are no good for a woman. Not when all of the men have been along for so long. She glances at him askance, before she shrugs and packs up her things. Charlie knows, somehow, that his invitation wasn't purely unselfish. He wants to prove to Hermione, although he's not quite sure what.

It is the birthday of the twins, the first since the War, and he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't—fuck, his brother is dead, and he didn't do anything, he wasn't even _there_—

Hermione finds him leaning against the outside wall of his cabin, bottle of firewhisky in hand as he watches the sun set. Her hand finds his, and he sets the bottle down.

**Jaymay – Gray and Blue**

Hermione, much to her surprise, finds that she really does like Charlie. At first it was a friendship built on the fact that she is his little brother's best mate; and then it was professional courtesy; but now, they are friends for their own sake. He's so entirely different from Harry and Ron, two of the men she's been close with for nearly her whole life up to this point, or what feels like it, that she's not sure how to react.

It is Charlie, though, who hears her screams when she has a nightmare of her time with Bellatrix, and he comes into her bedroom, bleary-eyed from sleep, shirtless, underthings riding low on his hips, and immediately comes to her side and shakes her awake.

"It's okay, Hermione. It's over now. It's over now," he says, and she clutches at him so fiercely that he joins her in bed, merely holding her. He stays awake for longer, watching her sleep, absentmindedly stroking her hair.

When she wakes, Charlie is still there, and there is no awkwardness, or expectation. Perhaps she does know how to react, after all.

**Chris DeBurgh – Lady In Red**

McGonnagal holds a Victory Ball at Hogwarts that year, on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. An invitation arrives for the both of them from the school, and at first neither of them are too willing to go. Hermione ahs come to love the life she leads at the Reservation, and Charlie is unwilling to leave the Ridgeback when its death is so close. It is George, in the end, not the Howler sent from Mrs. Weasley, that convinces them to attend.

Charlie has a Butterbeer in hand, and he's laughing at a joke Ginny just told, when he spies Hermione. She's wearing a gorgeous red dress, one that clings to her in every possible good way, and he finds that he's at a loss for words. She's his kid brother's best mate, for Merlin's sake. She's a coworker, a friend. He shouldn't—and then she sees him, smiles brightly, and Charlie forgets what he should or shouldn't feel.

They meet in the middle, and she fidgets uncomfortably.

"Charlie," she begins.

He shakes his head, holding his hand out to her.

"May I have this dance?" he asks, grinning.

She smiles back. "Yes, Charlie. Of course."

**She & Him – Gonna Get Along Without You Now**

Two weeks following the Victory Ball, Hermione gets called back to London on some urgent matter. She doesn't get a chance to say goodbye to Charlie, who was out in the forest with other workers from the Reservation, finding a loose baby dragon.

She apparates to London, miserable.

Charlie returns to the Reservation, and finds Hermione gone. He kicks a chair over, missing the note that was on the table; it floats to the ground, and is covered by his jacket. He doesn't know why she's left, and he's miserable.

Days pass before Charlie finds the note.

Hermione works in the Ministry, helping the Aurors, but her mind is always elsewhere.

**Jack's Mannequin – Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)**

Charlie writes her, following his discovery of the note. The letter arrives on a day when Hermione is tired from work, miserable with grief, and annoyed with Draco, whose punishment from the Wizengamot is mandated work with those displaced by the War, and which work is located in Hermione's own department. It is her luck, she supposes, that they put Draco in the cubicle next to hers.

She reads the letter, once, twice, and then a smile breaks over her face.

"Don't smile like that Granger," Draco drawls from next to her. "You'll break mirrors."

She scowls at him half-heartedly, and writes Charlie back. The letters become a regular occurrence. By the end of the summer she has a stack thick enough to be A History of Magic.

Draco teases her consistently about the letters and her mystery boyfriend, but she brushes it off. She assures him that there's nothing romantic behind the letters, but she's old enough and wise enough to realize that she's hoping there is.

What she doesn't know, of course, is that Charlie is as well.

The dragon hasn't died yet, and the wizards are getting impatient.

**OneRepublic – All This Time**

Hermione returns to the Reservation just as school is getting started up again. He sees her talking with a few of the workers and he drops the bag of feed.

"Hermione?" he calls.

She turns around and her face lights up at the sight of him. She runs to him and he picks her up, swings her around, and his hand finds its way to her cheek, thumb brushing absentmindedly over her cheekbone, before he even comprehends what it is that he's done.

Before he can remove his hand though, Hermione covers it with one of her own. Their entwined hands fall to their side, and they stand in the middle of the Reservation, smiling stupidly at each other for another moment.

"I'm glad," Charlie says finally, "that you're back. Reservation hasn't been as lively with you gone."

"What you mean," she teases, "is that the Reservation is a lot less calmer without me driving everyone batty."

"Oh, well…that too. But mostly I just missed you," he replies, uneasy for the first time in his own skin.

She pulls his hand up, holds it with both of hers. She presses a kiss to his knuckles. "I've missed you too," she whispers, looking up to meet his gaze with her own.

**Jenny Lewis – Sing a Song for Them**

"I think I would like to marry you," Charlie says one day, several months after she has returned to the Reservation.

Hermione turns away from the pot in the kitchen she was hovering over. She looks at him incredulously. "Why, in the name of Merlin's baggy fronts, would you like to marry me?"

He walks over to her, placing his hands on her hips. "So," he replies, "I can kiss you whenever I want."

She frowns at him, feigning being cross. "What's marriage have to do with it, when you already kiss me whenever you want?"

"Well, if you're going to be cross about it, I guess I'll just have to get rid of this ring," he says lightly, playing along with her. He pulls the small box out of his pocket, and sees her eye it warily.

"Marriage, Charlie…" she trails off. "I'm only twenty."

"Then," he replies, "we have a lifetime."

She smiles at him fondly, her hands moving up to his hair, threading through gently. He looked at her curiously. "Well, then?"

"I will marry you," she says finally, "when my work here is done."

"And then?"

"Then, I'll have something to stay for."

**Susie Suh – Shell**

The Norwegian Ridgeback, having lived far longer than anyone expected, dies approximately two months after Charlie's proposal and Hermione's conditional acceptance.

Charlie looks at the dragon hard for a moment, then looks to the other wizards. "Well," he says, "best to get started then."

Hermione looks on from behind a glass observation platform as Charlie cuts open the chest of the dragon, explaining carefully to the young workers what they're seeing. He touches the heartstrings briefly, almost fondly, and looks up at her. Those heartstrings will make wands for many a witch and wizard, she thinks. Several hundred strings, one or two in a wand… It will save the wizarding community. And Charlie, she realizes, has saved her in every way a person can be saved.

She smiles at him, turning the ring around her finger. This was the beginning.

Charlie smiles back, faintly, and turns back to the dragon.

**Bon Iver & St. Vincent – Roslyn**

And so they build their life together.

The wedding is held at the Burrow. Surrounded by family and friends, Hermione and Charlie take their vows. She is now Mrs. Weasley, even if she didn't marry the son she thought she would.

Time, thinks Hermione, passes all too quickly.

She is pregnant in a moment, laughing as Charlie dances with her in the kitchen, his rich baritone filling the room. They're having dinner, surrounded by friends. She is in St. Mungo's next, crying out and cursing her husband in the same moment, then crying as she holds her baby boy in her arms.

She is washing dishes, looking out the window over the sink to the lawn where Charlie and her son play. He picks up Tommy, tosses him in the air, laughing. He sees Hermione and smiles warmly at her. She smiles back.

They are old, soon. Their son grown and graduating from Hogwarts, getting married to the daughter of Neville Longbottom.

"Hermione?"

She turns to Charlie, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes new and yet so familiar.

"We grew old," she says softly. "It happened while we weren't looking."

"Dear heart," he responds, "but we grew old together."

She smiles faintly, and he holds her in his arms.

"It was a good life, wasn't it?"

"Of course it was, Hermione. Of course."


End file.
